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Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over a network (typically the Internet). Cloud computing entrusts services (typically centralized) with a user's data, software and computation on a published application programming interface (API) over a network. It has considerable overlap with software as a service (SaaS). End users access cloud based applications through a web browser or a light weight desktop or mobile app while the business software and data are stored on servers at a remote location. Cloud application providers strive to give the same or better service and performance than if the software programs were installed locally on end-user computers. At the foundation of cloud computing is the broader concept of infrastructure convergence (or Converged Infrastructure) and shared services. This type of data centre environment allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with easier manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to more rapidly adjust IT resources (such as servers, storage, and networking) to meet fluctuating and unpredictable business demand. Comparison Cloud computing shares characteristics with: * Autonomic computing — Computer systems capable of self-management. * Client–server model — Client–server computing refers broadly to any distributed application that distinguishes between service providers (servers) and service requesters (clients). * Grid computing — "A form of distributed and parallel computing, whereby a 'super and virtual computer' is composed of a cluster of networked, loosely coupled computers acting in concert to perform very large tasks." * Mainframe computer — Powerful computers used mainly by large organizations for critical applications, typically bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, police and secret intelligence services, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing. * Utility computing — The "packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a traditional public utility, such as electricity." * Peer-to-peer — Distributed architecture without the need for central coordination, with participants being at the same time both suppliers and consumers of resources (in contrast to the traditional client–server model). Characteristics Cloud computing exhibits the following key characteristics: * Agility improves with users' ability to re-provision technological infrastructure resources. * Application programming interface (API) accessibility to software that enables machines to interact with cloud software in the same way the user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. Cloud computing systems typically use REST-based APIs. * Cost is claimed to be reduced and in a public cloud delivery model capital expenditure is converted to operational expenditure. This is purported to lower barriers to entry, as infrastructure is typically provided by a third-party and does not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent intensive computing tasks. Pricing on a utility computing basis is fine-grained with usage-based options and fewer IT skills are required for implementation (in-house). The e-FISCAL project's state of the art repository contains several articles looking into cost aspects in more detail, most of them concluding that costs savings depend on the type of activities supported and the type of infrastructure available in-house. * Device and location independence enable users to access systems using a web browser regardless of their location or what device they are using (e.g., PC, mobile phone). As infrastructure is off-site (typically provided by a third-party) and accessed via the Internet, users can connect from anywhere. * Virtualization technology allows servers and storage devices to be shared and utilization be increased. Applications can be easily migrated from one physical server to another. * Multi-tenancy enables sharing of resources and costs across a large pool of users thus allowing for: ** Centralization of infrastructure in locations with lower costs (such as real estate, electricity, etc.) ** Peak-load capacity increases (users need not engineer for highest possible load-levels) ** Utilisation and efficiency improvements for systems that are often only 10–20% utilised. * Reliability is improved if multiple redundant sites are used, which makes well-designed cloud computing suitable for business continuity and disaster recovery. * Scalability and Elasticity via dynamic ("on-demand") provisioning of resources on a fine-grained, self-service basis near real-time, without users having to engineer for peak loads. * Performance is monitored, and consistent and loosely coupled architectures are constructed using web services as the system interface. * Security could improve due to centralization of data, increased security-focused resources, etc., but concerns can persist about loss of control over certain sensitive data, and the lack of security for stored kernels. Security is often as good as or better than other traditional systems, in part because providers are able to devote resources to solving security issues that many customers cannot afford. However, the complexity of security is greatly increased when data is distributed over a wider area or greater number of devices and in multi-tenant systems that are being shared by unrelated users. In addition, user access to security audit logs may be difficult or impossible. Private cloud installations are in part motivated by users' desire to retain control over the infrastructure and avoid losing control of information security. * ' Maintenance' of cloud computing applications is easier, because they do not need to be installed on each user's computer and can be accessed from different places. History The term "cloud" is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used in the past to represent the telephone network, and later to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents. The ubiquitous availability of high capacity networks, low cost computers and storage devices as well as the widespread adoption of virtualisation, service-oriented architecture, autonomic, and utility computing have led to a tremendous growth in cloud computing Details are abstracted from end-users, who no longer have need for expertise in, or control over, the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them. The underlying concept of cloud computing dates back to the 1960s, when John McCarthy opined that "computation may someday be organised as a public utility." Almost all the modern-day characteristics of cloud computing (elastic provision, provided as a utility, online, illusion of infinite supply), the comparison to the electricity industry and the use of public, private, government, and community forms, were thoroughly explored in Douglas Parkhill's 1966 book, The Challenge of the Computer Utility. Other scholars have shown that cloud computing's roots go all the way back to the 1950s when scientist Herb Grosch (the author of Grosch's law) postulated that the entire world would operate on dumb terminals powered by about 15 large data centers. . The actual term "cloud" borrows from telephony in that telecommunications companies, who until the 1990s offered primarily dedicated point-to-point data circuits, began offering Virtual Private Network (VPN) services with comparable quality of service but at a much lower cost. By switching traffic to balance utilisation as they saw fit, they were able to utilise their overall network bandwidth more effectively. The cloud symbol was used to denote the demarcation point between that which was the responsibility of the provider and that which was the responsibility of the user. Cloud computing extends this boundary to cover servers as well as the network infrastructure. After the dot-com bubble, Amazon played a key role in the development of cloud computing by modernising their data centers, which, like most computer networks, were using as little as 10% of their capacity at any one time, just to leave room for occasional spikes. Having found that the new cloud architecture resulted in significant internal efficiency improvements whereby small, fast-moving "two-pizza teams" could add new features faster and more easily, Amazon initiated a new product development effort to provide cloud computing to external customers, and launched Amazon Web Service (AWS) on a utility computing basis in 2006. . . In early 2008, Eucalyptus became the first open-source, AWS API-compatible platform for deploying private clouds. In early 2008, OpenNebula, enhanced in the RESERVOIR European Commission-funded project, became the first open-source software for deploying private and hybrid clouds, and for the federation of clouds.B Rochwerger, J Caceres, RS Montero, D Breitgand, E Elmroth, A Galis, E Levy, IM Llorente, K Nagin, Y Wolfsthal, E Elmroth, J Caceres, M Ben-Yehuda, W Emmerich, F Galan. "The RESERVOIR Model and Architecture for Open Federated Cloud Computing", IBM Journal of Research and Development, Vol. 53, No. 4. (2009) In the same year, efforts were focused on providing QoS guarantees (as required by real-time interactive applications) to cloud-based infrastructures, in the framework of the IRMOS European Commission-funded project, resulting to a real-time cloud environment.D Kyriazis, A Menychtas, G Kousiouris, K Oberle, T Voith, M Boniface, E Oliveros, T Cucinotta, S Berger, “A Real-time Service Oriented Infrastructure”, International Conference on Real-Time and Embedded Systems (RTES 2010), Singapore, November 2010 By mid-2008, Gartner saw an opportunity for cloud computing "to shape the relationship among consumers of IT services, those who use IT services and those who sell them"Keep an eye on cloud computing, Amy Schurr, Network World, 2008-07-08, citing the Gartner report, "Cloud Computing Confusion Leads to Opportunity". Retrieved 2009-09-11. and observed that "organisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models" so that the "projected shift to cloud computing... will result in dramatic growth in IT products in some areas and significant reductions in other areas."Gartner Says Worldwide IT Spending On Pace to Surpass Trillion in 2008, Gartner, 2008-08-18. Retrieved 2009-09-11. Service Models Cloud computing providers offer their services according to three fundamental models: Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) where IaaS is the most basic and each higher model abstracts from the details of the lower models. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) In this most basic cloud service model, cloud providers offer computers – as physical or more often as virtual machines –, raw (block) storage, firewalls, load balancers, and networks. IaaS providers supply these resources on demand from their large pools installed in data centers. Local area networks including IP addresses are part of the offer. For the wide area connectivity, the Internet can be used or - in carrier clouds - dedicated virtual private networks can be configured. To deploy their applications, cloud users then install operating system images on the machines as well as their application software. In this model, it is the cloud user who is responsible for patching and maintaining the operating systems and application software. Cloud providers typically bill IaaS services on a utility computing basis, that is, cost will reflect the amount of resources allocated and consumed. Platform as a Service (PaaS) In the PaaS model, cloud providers deliver a computing platform and/or solution stack typically including operating system, programming language execution environment, database, and web server. Application developers can develop and run their software solutions on a cloud platform without the cost and complexity of buying and managing the underlying hardware and software layers. With some PaaS offers, the underlying compute and storage resources scale automatically to match application demand such that the cloud user does not have to allocate resources manually. Software as a Service (SaaS) In this model, cloud providers install and operate application software in the cloud and cloud users access the software from cloud clients. The cloud users do not manage the cloud infrastructure and platform on which the application is running. This eliminates the need to install and run the application on the cloud user's own computers simplifying maintenance and support. What makes a cloud application different from other applications is its elasticity. This can be achieved by cloning tasks onto multiple virtual machines at run-time to meet the changing work demand. Load balancers distribute the work over the set of virtual machines. This process is transparent to the cloud user who sees only a single access point. To accommodate a large number of cloud users, cloud applications can be multitenant, that is, any machine serves more than one cloud user organization. It is common to refer to special types of cloud based application software with a similar naming convention: desktop as a service, business process as a service, Test Environment as a Service, communication as a service. The pricing model for SaaS applications is typically a monthly or yearly flat fee per user. Cloud clients Users access cloud computing using networked client devices, such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones. Some of these devices - cloud clients - rely on cloud computing for all or a majority of their applications so as to be essentially useless without it. Examples are thin clients and the browser-based Chromebook. Many cloud applications do not require specific software on the client and instead use a web browser to interact with the cloud application. With Ajax and HTML5 these Web user interfaces can achieve a similar or even better look and feel as native applications. Some cloud applications, however, support specific client software dedicated to these applications (e.g., virtual desktop clients and most email clients). Some legacy applications (line of business applications that until now have been prevalent in thin client Windows computing) are delivered via a screen-sharing technology. Deployment models Public cloud Public cloud applications, storage, and other resources are made available to the general public by a service provider. These services are free or offered on a pay-per-use model. Generally, public cloud service providers like Microsoft and Google own and operate the infrastructure and offer access only via Internet (direct connectivity is not offered). Community cloud Community cloud shares infrastructure between several organizations from a specific community with common concerns (security, compliance, jurisdiction, etc.), whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. The costs are spread over fewer users than a public cloud (but more than a private cloud), so only some of the cost savings potential of cloud computing are realized. Hybrid cloud Hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together, offering the benefits of multiple deployment models. By utilizing "hybrid cloud" architecture, companies and individuals are able to obtain degrees of fault tolerance combined with locally immediate usability without dependency on internet connectivity. Hybrid Cloud architecture requires both on-premises resources and off-site (remote) server based cloud infrastructure. Hybrid clouds lack the flexibility, security and certainty of in-house applications. Hybrid cloud provides the flexibility of in house applications with the fault tolerance and scalability of cloud based services. Private cloud Private cloud is cloud infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally. They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from less hands-on management, essentially "lacking the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept". Architecture Cloud architecture, the systems architecture of the software systems involved in the delivery of cloud computing, typically involves multiple cloud components communicating with each other over a loose coupling mechanism such as a messaging queue. Elastic provision implies intelligence in the use of tight or loose coupling as applied to mechanisms such as these and others. The Intercloud The Intercloud is an interconnected global "cloud of clouds" and an extension of the Internet "network of networks" on which it is based. Cloud engineering Cloud engineering is the application of engineering disciplines to cloud computing. It brings a systematic approach to the high level concerns of commercialisation, standardisation, and governance in conceiving, developing, operating and maintaining cloud computing systems. It is a multidisciplinary method encompassing contributions from diverse areas such as systems, software, web, performance, information, security, platform, risk, and quality engineering. Issues Privacy The cloud model has been criticised by privacy advocates for the greater ease in which the companies hosting the cloud services control, thus, can monitor at will, lawfully or unlawfully, the communication and data stored between the user and the host company. Instances such as the secret NSA program, working with AT&T, and Verizon, which recorded over 10 million phone calls between American citizens, causes uncertainty among privacy advocates, and the greater powers it gives to telecommunication companies to monitor user activity. Using a cloud service provider (CSP) can complicate privacy of data because of the extent to which virtualization for cloud processing (virtual machines) and cloud storage are used to implement cloud service. The point is that because of CSP operations, customer or tenant data may not remain on the same system, or in the same data center or even within the same provider's cloud. This can lead to legal concerns over jurisdiction. While there have been efforts (such as US-EU Safe Harbor) to "harmonise" the legal environment, providers such as Amazon still cater to major markets (typically the United States and the European Union) by deploying local infrastructure and allowing customers to select "availability zones." Cloud computing poses privacy concerns because the service provider at any point in time, may access the data that is on the cloud. They could accidentally or deliberately alter or even delete some info. Compliance In order to obtain compliance with regulations including FISMA, HIPAA, and SOX in the United States, the Data Protection Directive in the EU and the credit card industry's PCI DSS, users may have to adopt community or hybrid deployment modes that are typically more expensive and may offer restricted benefits. This is how Google is able to "manage and meet additional government policy requirements beyond FISMA" and Rackspace Cloud or QubeSpace are able to claim PCI compliance. Many providers also obtain a SAS 70 Type II audit, but this has been criticised on the grounds that the hand-picked set of goals and standards determined by the auditor and the auditee are often not disclosed and can vary widely. Providers typically make this information available on request, under non-disclosure agreement. Customers in the EU contracting with cloud providers established outside the EU/EEA have to adhere to the EU regulations on export of personal data. U.S. Federal Agencies have been directed by the Office of Management and Budget to use a process called FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) to assess and authorize cloud products and services. Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel issued a memorandum to federal agency Chief Information Officers on December 8, 2011 defining how federal agencies should use FedRAMP. FedRAMP consists of a subset of NIST Special Publication 800-53 security controls specifically selected to provide protection in cloud environments. A subset has been defined for the FIPS 199 low categorization and the FIPS 199 moderate categorization. The FedRAMP program has also established a Joint Acceditation Board (JAB) consisting of Chief Information Officers from DoD, DHS and GSA. The JAB is responsible for establishing accreditation standards for 3rd party organizations who will perform the assessments of cloud solutions. The JAB will also review authorization packages and may grant provisional authorization (to operate). The federal agency consuming the service will still have the final responsibility for final authority to operate. More information available from GSA at http://www.gsa.gov/portal/category/102371. Legal As can be expected with any revolutionary change in the landscape of global computing, certain legal issues arise; everything from trademark infringement, security concerns to the sharing of propriety data resources. Open source Open-source software has provided the foundation for many cloud computing implementations, one prominent example being the Hadoop framework. In November 2007, the Free Software Foundation released the Affero General Public License, a version of GPLv3 intended to close a perceived legal loophole associated with free software designed to be run over a network. Open standards Most cloud providers expose APIs that are typically well-documented (often under a Creative Commons licenseGoGrid Moves API Specification to Creative Commons ) but also unique to their implementation and thus not interoperable. Some vendors have adopted others' APIs and there are a number of open standards under development, with a view to delivering interoperability and portability. Security As cloud computing is achieving increased popularity, concerns are being voiced about the security issues introduced through adoption of this new model. The effectiveness and efficiency of traditional protection mechanisms are being reconsidered as the characteristics of this innovative deployment model can differ widely from those of traditional architectures. An alternative perspective on the topic of cloud security is that this is but another, although quite broad, case of "applied security" and that similar security principles that apply in shared multi-user mainframe security models apply with cloud security. The relative security of cloud computing services is a contentious issue that may be delaying its adoption. Physical control of the Private Cloud equipment is more secure than having the equipment off site and under someone else’s control. Physical control and the ability to visually inspect the data links and access ports is required in order to ensure data links are not compromised. Issues barring the adoption of cloud computing are due in large part to the private and public sectors' unease surrounding the external management of security-based services. It is the very nature of cloud computing-based services, private or public, that promote external management of provided services. This delivers great incentive to cloud computing service providers to prioritize building and maintaining strong management of secure services. Security issues have been categorised into sensitive data access, data segregation, privacy, bug exploitation, recovery, accountability, malicious insiders, management console security, account control, and multi-tenancy issues. Solutions to various cloud security issues vary, from cryptography, particularly public key infrastructure (PKI), to use of multiple cloud providers, standardisation of APIs, and improving virtual machine support and legal support. Sustainability Although cloud computing is often assumed to be a form of "green computing", there is no published study to substantiate this assumption. Citing the servers affects the environmental effects of cloud computing. In areas where climate favors natural cooling and renewable electricity is readily available, the environmental effects will be more moderate. (The same holds true for "traditional" data centers.) Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as Finland,Finland – First Choice for Siting Your Cloud Computing Data Center.. Retrieved 4 August 2010. Sweden and Switzerland,Swiss Carbon-Neutral Servers Hit the Cloud.. Retrieved 4 August 2010. are trying to attract cloud computing data centers. Energy efficiency in cloud computing can result from energy-aware scheduling and server consolidation.Berl, Andreas, et al., Energy-Efﬁcient Cloud Computing, The Computer Journal, 2010. However, in the case of distributed clouds over data centers with different source of energies including renewable source of energies, a small compromise on energy consumption reduction could result in high carbon footprint reduction.Farrahi Moghaddam, Fereydoun, et al., Low Carbon Virtual Private Clouds, IEEE Cloud 2011. Abuse As with privately purchased hardware, customers can purchase the services of cloud computing for nefarious purposes. This includes password cracking and launching attacks using the purchased services. In 2009, a banking trojan illegally used the popular Amazon service as a command and control channel that issued software updates and malicious instructions to PCs that were infected by the malware.PlayStation Network hack launched from Amazon EC2 - The Register Research Many universities, vendors and government organisations are investing in research around the topic of cloud computing: * In October 2007, the Academic Cloud Computing Initiative (ACCI) was announced as a multi-university project designed to enhance students' technical knowledge to address the challenges of cloud computing. * In April 2009, UC Santa Barbara released the first open source platform-as-a-service, AppScale, which is capable of running Google App Engine applications at scale on a multitude of infrastructures. * In April 2009, the St Andrews Cloud Computing Co-laboratory was launched, focusing on research in the important new area of cloud computing. Unique in the UK, StACC aims to become an international centre of excellence for research and teaching in cloud computing and will provide advice and information to businesses interested in using cloud-based services * In October 2010, the TClouds (Trustworthy Clouds) project was started, funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. The project's goal is to research and inspect the legal foundation and architectural design to build a resilient and trustworthy cloud-of-cloud infrastructure on top of that. The project also develops a prototype to demonstrate its results. * In December 2010, the TrustCloud research project was started by HP Labs Singapore to address transparency and accountability of cloud computing via detective, data-centric approaches encapsulated in a five-layer TrustCloud Framework. The team identified the need for monitoring data life cycles and transfers in the cloud, leading to the tackling of key cloud computing security issues such as cloud data leakages, cloud accountability and cross-national data transfers in transnational clouds. * In July 2011, the High Performance Computing Cloud (HPCCLoud) project was kicked-off aiming at finding out the possibilities of enhancing performance on cloud environments while running the scientific applications - development of HPCCLoud Performance Analysis Toolkit which was funded by CIM-Returning Experts Programme - under the coordination of Prof. Dr. Shajulin Benedict. * In June 2011, the Telecommunications Industry Association developed a Cloud Computing White Paper, to analyze the integration challenges and opportunities between cloud services and traditional U.S. telecommunications standards. See also *Introduction to Cloud computing *Cloud computing comparison *Cloud database *Cloud storage *Web operating system *Cloud collaboration *Software as a service *Platform as a service References External links * The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing. Peter Mell and Timothy Grance, NIST Special Publication 800-145 (September 2011). National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. * Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing. Wayne Jansen and Timothy Grance, NIST Special Publication 800-144 (December 2011). National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. ar:حوسبة سحابية bn:ক্লাউড কম্পিউটিং map-bms:Komputasi lamuk be:Клаўд-камп'ютынг bg:Изчисления в облак ca:Informàtica en núvol cs:Cloud computing da:Cloud computing de:Cloud-Computing et:Pilvandmetöötlus es:Computación en la nube eo:Nuba komputado eu:Hodei konputazioa fa:رایانش ابری fr:Cloud computing ko:클라우드 컴퓨팅 hi:क्लाउड कम्प्यूटिंग id:Komputasi awan is:Tölvuský it:Cloud computing he:מחשוב ענן lv:Mākoņskaitļošana lt:Internetinis debesis hu:Számítási felhő mk:Обработка во облак ml:ക്ലൗഡ് കമ്പ്യൂട്ടിങ്ങ് ms:Pengkomputeran awan nl:Cloud computing ne:क्लाउड कम्प्यूटिंग ja:クラウドコンピューティング no:Nettskyen uz:Bulutli hisoblash pl:Chmura obliczeniowa pt:Computação em nuvem ro:Cloud computing ru:Облачные вычисления simple:Cloud computing sk:Cloud computing sl:Računalništvo v oblaku fi:Pilvilaskenta sv:Datormoln ta:மேகக் கணிமை te:క్లౌడ్ కంప్యూటింగ్ th:การประมวลผลแบบกลุ่มเมฆ tg:Роёниши абрӣ tr:Bulut bilişim uk:Хмарні обчислення vi:Điện toán đám mây zh:雲端運算 A sourced reference lifted electronically from the internet from the website: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cloud_computing&action=edit MABUHAY! Angmayakda 08:40, Abril 22, 2012 (UTC) Category:Cloud computing Category:Cloud platforms Category:Free software for cloud computing Kaurian:AppendixO Kaurian:Computer Studies